


God and The Devil Down Below

by s_syncopate



Category: Homeland
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-27
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-24 15:19:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10744365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_syncopate/pseuds/s_syncopate
Summary: Minutes after the world's most awkward comfort hug in 6x03, Carrie realizes she needs to shift strategies. And maybe stop lying to herself.





	God and The Devil Down Below

The man in the basement was just fine. 

She was used to lying, could treat it with whimsy, if she wanted, but this felt different. There was no end to the ruse. 

“Get your bag honey,” she yelled from the kitchen. Frannie was waiting by the front door. “I already put your book in.” 

Her voice was doing that thing where it went high at the end of a request. So cheerful and patient.

The smile sometimes hurt her face. It felt too tight. Everything did.

She dumped Frannie’s cereal bowl into the sink so hard that it slid up the back, flipped over and sloshed tepid milk all over her shirt.  
“Fuck.” She exhaled, pulling shirt gently out from skin. It clung there, not wanting to let go. Her jacket would cover up the stain but not the smell; she’d have to change before leaving. It was today’s fucking theme: realizing all the shit she’d been trying on was not going to work. 

This life, fucking cereal and library books and civilian problems. She’d been playing a part, trying it on for her daughter’ sake. But now she’d gone and dragged Quinn into it, making him play the invalid in the basement, hapless and tamed.  
But he wasn’t. Not in the least.

A shiver ran up her spine, making her back arch involuntarily. An echo from only minutes earlier: Quinn’s hand, her skin. 

A moment of comfort turned sour because she had no clue how to play caretaker. How was one supposed to lay hands on a man mid-nightmare, screaming and scared? She’d calmed him the only way knew how, by going all in. Her body had heaved up and down with his as he tried to catch his breath. She could feel her own pulse, her pulmonary vein pinched into his shoulder. Lower, his heart beat full tilt into hers. She’d gotten distracted by it, and suddenly it had been the cool basement air on her back, the rough touch of his fingers, and even then, it took her a second to know how New Carrie should respond. Christ, in the interim she may have pulled him tighter. How fucking inappropriate. 

Ex-CIA civilian Carrie knew better. She was a good mom and had boundaries. This echo that lingered now from Quinn’s touch, it was meant to be ignored. Same with his smell, that heavy muskiness that remained on her clothes and was making her lightheaded because she’d always had a thing for the way men smelled in the morning and— 

“Mommy, they’re here.”

Carrie cleared her throat, ““Okay sweetie, get your backpack on.” Seriously, whose voice was that? It wasn’t hers. 

The floor squeaked underneath her quick steps to the front door. 

Carrie greeted Frannie’s walking group, said something polite and thankful probably, but it was all very far away. She was distracted again, because this voice, the one she was using even now as she waved her daughter goodbye, she’d used it on Quinn, too. She’d been talking down to him. Pandering to his self-pity as if he were a child. 

No wonder he was frustrated. 

She waited until the walking group had rounded the corner before she took out her phone.  
“Yeah, hey, Reda, slight change of plans. Frannie just puked up her breakfast. I can’t send her like this….No, no, I’m sure she’ll be okay, there’s a bug going around her class, and I’ve got the nanny on her way, but I’ve gotta get everything cleaned up. “I—”

A creak of movement in the basement. 

“I can’t leave things like this.”

~

She hadn’t changed her milk-stained shirt. It was part of the plan; seeing her like this, a bit of a mess, would help him. She marched down the basement stairs with aggressive purpose, so he would hear her coming, maybe get prepared for her onslaught. 

But out of stubbornness or indifference, he was where she had left him, lying flaccid in bed. 

“Enough of this sad sack bullshit,” she pushed restless hands into her pockets. “Get up.” 

The way he stared at her - eyes harder than anyone’s, that was expected. But the moment he started moving, the second he pulled back the sheets and brought out his stiff legs - god, she felt shaky all over. She needed to get her arsenal from the bathroom anyway, so walked there now, roughly grabbing the perfectly creased towel from the rack, the unused bar of soap from the shower. The bar trembled in her hands. Fuck, she was in control, not him. She tucked the soap in the towel and laid it carefully over her crossed arms, attempting to shroud her fear. 

He’d turned the bedside light on, was sitting upright and rigid against the headboard. He saw the towel in her arms and shook his head, chest deflating, air whirring out of his mouth as through from a balloon. 

“You stink, Quinn.” Then, wielding towel as weapon, “This is happening.”  
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” He spoke slowly. “Someone else to bl—bludgeon with advice? I don’t need your p—pity.”

She’d become used to ignoring the stutter and the grasping for words. It wasn’t really him, after all. Just like the high voice wasn’t her. Just false identities.

“Pity? No, I’m being selfish, trust me. Because when you eventually get your shit together and move out, I have to rent this place.” She was speaking too quickly. He’d see that she was nervous. She took a slow breath, as deep as she could muster without a visible rise and fall of her chest. “I don’t want my future tenants thinking they’re moving into the Brooklyn Bus Terminal.”

“Fuck off.”

“Can’t do that, soldier.” She plunked the towel and soap down, then looked away, swallowing against the cork in her throat. “So I guess it’s time to go to war.”

His eyebrows shot up. “What are you going to do? Wrestle me into the—”

She kept her eyes fully on him, unwavering from her position as she pulled her shirt over her head. The air was warmer than it had been. Still, her skin rose to goosebumps because she was actually fucking doing this.

His eyes had trouble focusing sometimes, but not now. Now he might as well have been looking through a rifle sight. 

Heat rose quickly up her body to her face; the way he kept her there with his gaze. 

The bed squeaked staccato as he rose, fighting against still-fresh clumsiness. He stood straight, though, and pulled off that stupid grey sweater more gracefully than it deserved. 

His tall frame blocked the morning light already struggling to get in the window. He turned slightly so that a thin flicker could cast spotlight on his bare torso. He was doing this purposefully, so she could see him, really see him, scars and all. 

Though his skin was palled, traces of muscle seized and undulated underneath. Whatever had happened in his brain, his body was still one of a fighter. 

“So,” His voice was strangled, “What happens now?”

After this morning, it would be up to her. Probably. Shit, would it? God, they were playing a game of chicken in the dark. 

“Quinn, I—” 

He lurched forward and grabbed her shoulder. afraid, maybe, that’s she’d run. She was afraid too, and was relieved for the anchor. That’s what he’d always been - the one thing keeping her from running aground. 

She wanted to tell him that now, but the words were snuffed out; he had let go of her shoulder was tracing circles on it with his fingers. Her scar, where he’d shot her. Tiny shards of light from the window and hit her there now, again. 

Her legs barely took her forward, that one step so hard, everything so achingly heavy. 

She drew her hand across his belly, grazed her fingers over the jagged edges of old, sealed wounds.

The one at the center, from the tailor’s shop, that was like her c-section scar, a result of time spent with Nicholas Brody. Their other wounds, the fresher ones, they were there because of each other. 

Her fingers traced the scar from Berlin around to his back, where the bullet had exited.

They stood, connected only by fragile fingers, shaking hands.  
“Nine days, I left you in Berlin.” Her voice, her real one, cracked. “Nine days when I should have been—”

“No pity,” he whispered. Then, to force the point, he reached around her back and pulled her in tight. His chest pushed into her still-covered breasts, and she arched her shoulders back to make it easy for him to release the clasp on her bra. 

Her nipples went hard as soon as they touched his skin. A trail of his sweat followed the curve of her breast downward. He eased her back just a little, heat pulsing in the narrow space between their bodies as he reached his hand up and brushed two fingers across the tip of one nipple. 

She didn’t mean to moan, but the truth of those two fingers, the way they stripped pretence clean away. 

There would be no more playing parts.

She had intended to be gentle with him, to soften and meet him where he was, but he pinched harder now, unyielding, and so her answer was instinctual. She raked fingers down his back, to the bottom of the curve beneath, and she squeezed. 

Everything had been so numb for so long. She’d shut it down, compartmentalized it, now it burst out, angry to have been held at bay. She pushed in her nails, piercing skin. She needed to make sure he would feel it; how much she hurt because of him. 

She cried when he clamped down hard on the only piece of her he held, and whispered tight to his ear: “Are you a monster?” 

His hand reached down, a targeted, direct approach. He found her wet between her legs, the V of his fingers sliding around her clit.

“Fuck.” She gasped, stood on her toes to reach arms around his neck. As she rose higher to meet his lips, he kept his fingers still, and her coming up like that, well, it was just enough to let him in everywhere. He was prodding, above and below, those edges of him searching out the dark places she’d kept hidden. He was getting close, catching on, and she wanted him to break her wide. 

She rocked back and forth, forcing fingers further in, all the way to the wall of her cervix, to where pressure breaks. She only needed to show him once, and then he followed, fingers pushing hard and relentless while they kept their mouths soft and tender, compensation for the violence beneath. That was who they were, their shared dark dichotomies: Heavy and light, Victim and perpetrator. God and the devil down below. 

He keened in frustration, pulling his hand out and to her hip. She fought free of his grasp, tugging off the rest of his clothes before hers. She had barely enough time to get them clear before he collapsed on the bed. She crawled eagerly on top, ready and wanting and already guiding him in, right to the hilt.   
She shuddered, and began. 

They screamed, gasped, moaned words into each other’s mouths that didn’t make sense because they were lost to it, this moment that almost never was.   
How close she’d been to losing him. 

She slowed her pace, pausing when he was buried deep, and made him look at her as she was, sweat soaked and crying and bare. A fucking mess.  
He looked her back the same. 

She quickened then, holding his cock so tight with her body, and he called her home. Because they were the same. Despite everything, the two of them were built to carry burdens. They hadn’t been drawn to the shadows because they wanted to be martyrs, or even to be remembered.

They had wanted only to be true.

She broke first, losing control, arching before collapsing towards center. There they were again, like this morning, chest to chest, hearts pounding into one another as he screamed.

Only this time, she wouldn’t quiet him. She’d let him go.


End file.
